South African Institute for Medical Research and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Ed Arlene Judith Klotzko

Oxford University Press, £27.50, pp 328

ISBN 0 19 512882 6

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Any decision to proceed with human cloning ought to be taken by society and not by the enthusiastic scientists who devise and perfect the necessary techniques. Those, including the scientists, who doubt the capability of the public to make wise decisions, would do well to recall the opinion of Thomas Jefferson: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education” (Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, Mentor Books, New York, 1939).